Ionic liquids are salts with a melting temperature below the boiling point of water. Ionic liquids useful as solvents in industrial applications are also liquids at room temperature.
Room temperature ionic liquids or molten salts were described for the first time in U.S. Pat. No. 2,446,331. The problem with these ionic liquids described in this patent is that the anionic component can decompose on contact with atmospheric moisture.
More recently, air and moisture stable ionic liquids have been prepared, and now extensive studies have been carried out in two main areas:                1. The development of new ionic liquids based on many different cation and anion combinations.        2. The application of ionic liquids as immobilizing media for lanthanide and actinide series and transition metal catalysts.        
Ionic liquids are currently attracting considerable attention as novel solvents for organic synthesis and catalysis because the chemical industry is under pressure to replace environmentally damaging volatile organic solvents with more benign alternatives. “Room temperature ionic liquids”, especially those based on 1,3-dialkylimidazolium cations, have emerged as leading contenders since they have negligible vapor pressure, are air and moisture stable, and are highly solvating for both ionic and molecular species, and as a result are suitable for multiphasic catalysis. Although applications in synthesis and catalysis have been most widely explored, with the first industrial scale process now on-line for over a year, ionic liquids are also finding uses in separation processes, in electrochemistry, as electrolytes in solar cells, as lubricants, and as matrices in MALDI mass spectrometry.
One of the attractive features of ionic liquids in synthesis and catalysis is that both the cationic and anionic components can be varied and modified, so that a liquid can be tailored to specific applications. The term “task-specific ionic liquids” has been used to describe low melting salts with functional groups, such as amine and amide, sulfonic acid, ether and alcohol, carboxylic, urea and thiourea and phosphine functionalities, as well as fluorous chains attached to the alkyl side chains. The definition of task-specific ionic liquids is also extended to include ionic liquids with functional anions such as carboranes, metal carbonyl anions such as [Co(CO)4]−; the proprietary catalyst [Rh(CO)2I2]− and alkylselenites.
If ionic liquids are to be used to immobilize catalysts in multiphasic reactions, then the design and synthesis of task-specific ionic liquids is extremely important. Many different reactions have been catalyzed using ionic liquids as immobilization solvents including hydrogenation, hydroformylation and C—C coupling reactions. While the non-nucleophilic nature of many ionic liquids seems to be advantageous, providing a protective environment for the catalyst which can extend its lifetime, it has also emerged that ionic liquids that incorporate a coordination centre might be extremely useful, such that the ionic liquid serves as both immobilization solvent and ligand to the catalyst. Wasserscheid et al first described this concept by introducing a diphenylphosphine group at the 2-position of an imidazolium cation; the resulting salt was a not a “room temperature ionic liquid” and had to be dissolved in another ionic liquid for effective use in biphasic catalysis. The ligand, by virtue of being a salt, is highly soluble in ionic liquids and is strongly retained during product extraction. Groups such as NH2 and OH have also been successfully introduced into the imidazolium cation moieties but their ability to coordinate to lanthanide and actinide series and transition metals to give catalytically useful complexes is somewhat limited. More sophisticated functional groups such as thioureas and thioethers have been tethered to imidazolium based ionic liquids and they have been shown to extract toxic metal ions from aqueous solution.
It is one object of this invention to provide the synthesis and characterization of quaternized nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds, e.g. especially imidazolium or pyridinium heterocyclic compounds, such as salts, in which a nitrile group is attached to the alkyl side chain. The nitrile group is chosen as it is a promising donor to main group metals such as lithium and potassium, as well as lanthanide and actinide series and transition metals such as palladium and platinum. The physicochemical properties of these new ionic liquids are described. It is a further object of this invention to provide information about the relationship of the length of the alkyl unit linking the quaternized nitrogen-containing heterocyclic ring and the CN group, and how this relationship influences the melting point of the ionic liquid. Yet another object of this invention is to produce ionic liquids, which provide coordination centers (i.e. that act as ligands), while maintaining a low melting point, less than about 100° C., ideally at or below room temperature (i.e., acting as a solvent). A still further object of the invention is to demonstrate the applicability of these new ionic liquids in catalysis; as they have particular value in the immobilization of catalysts, enabling the catalyst to be recovered and efficiently recycled.
It is yet a further aspect of the invention to provide dual-functionalized ionic liquids and their properties.